Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) Mayor Athol Trollip has accused Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema of trying to pay penance to gain favour with the African National Congress (ANC).

Trollip wrote a three-page open letter to Malema, lashing out at the EFF leader on his mission to remove the mayor in a proposed motion of no confidence, scheduled for April.

"In all the time this coalition has been in government, you have not once visited NMB as far as I am aware. This perforce means that you would have no first-hand experience of what is actually happening in this city. "

Trollip held no punches in his letter, saying that Malema's 'threats' to the Democratic Alliance (DA) were a mistake.

"I think that you might have made a mistake with your latest threat and that you might have misread the national mood. If the DA had changed its position or my skin colour had changed, you might have had reason for your change of heart, this has however not happened."

He added that he believed citizens who wanted national unity would reject Malema's stance on race and that South Africans wanted to work and live together, get rid of corruption and grow the economy.

'No racial division'

Trollip boasted that he had been welcomed in NMB communities because "people's priorities are clearly not racial division and hatred".

"If the people of our country really and truly embraced your radically divisive rhetoric, your political party would have got more than 6% nationally and 4% locally. In fact, your performance in by-elections recently shows that the people of our country do not espouse this racial invective," he wrote.

He argued that, instead of preparing to govern as an independent political party, Malema intended handing back the city to the ANC which tried to ruin it as written in the book "How to steal a City".

"You used to call the EFF, the government in waiting, now you want to give your arch political foe the city that rejected them, on a platter. This looks much like a peace penance and perhaps the path back into the party fold that you once swore never to leave."

Trollip invited Malema to visit the city and explain to residents why he wanted to give it back to the ANC.

Efforts to reach the EFF were unsuccessful.